You might have seen the caricature of the caged gorilla grabbing an older man by his necktie and shouting angrily “#@*&% your theory of evolution, Darwin! I am not related to all these idiots.” As you can imagine, the background is filled with violent images – an ISIS-like character slitting the throat of someone, a bloody battle scene with a tank and wounded soldiers lying still, a policeman beating a young person, a dead baby with a vulture next to it, and a couple of dumb-looking characters making faces. The message is clear: the gorilla is shocked to see its descendants behave in such a savage manner. Spot on, Tarzan’s friend!
No one can deny the fact that we are living in a world marred by escalating violence. Nowhere is safe anymore; not a shopping center in Munich; not strolling along a boardwalk in Nice; not a club in Paris or Florida; not Brussels; not Istanbul; not Dhaka, and surely not Kabul, Myanmar, Baghdad, or anywhere in Syria. Mind you, apart from a civil war in Syria and to some extent in Iraq, the world is supposed to be at peace! I dare say that unfortunately the majority of the perpetrators of the extreme acts happening today come from our glorious part of the world, the Middle East!
The reasons for the current state of affairs are well beyond the scope of this column, but it is practically common knowledge now that malicious Occidental foreign policies have gotten all of us into this mess. The least we can say is that these foreign policies have created conditions that are ripe for the emergence of monsters with a doomsday agenda. In addition, with the decades of Saudi Arabian Wahhabi indoctrination that rejects anyone and any thought contrary to its own, coupled with the Arab Gulf States’ funding of fanatic factions with billions of dollars, the stage was set for such a cataclysmic situation.
I hate to be the prophet of doom, but I don’t see a safer world in the foreseeable future. In fact, political experts predict that it will get worse before it gets better. In the meantime (and apart from simply ducking), we could start with some major policy changes along with serious efforts to dry out the swamps of incitement, especially those that come through satellite channels. Obviously, much more is needed, but this would be a step in the right direction. Short of that, we will continue heading down an East-West collision course towards a culture war whose consequences only the Almighty knows.
